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  | Foeva Me, A Blog
Thank you to Andrew and the judges for a surprising "Best Blog" win in the 2012 Quills! |
May 3 prompt by Bonnie14222  : "May 3: Moving On"  Bonnie makes an awesome point. We all know that we will lose someone we love at some point or another in our lifetime. It is how we deal with that loss that makes it at least somewhat bearable. Besides losing my Grandfather when I was very young, I haven’t had much experience with the loss of family members. What I have had is experience with the loss of farm animals. This is going to sound weird but, when the neighbor’s dog massacred our flock of chickens, I was devastated. At the time, my family owned a farm (eggplant, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, papayas, peas) with many acres and many herds/flocks of animals (chickens/horses/sheep/goats/cows). We lived there for four or five years when I was in grade school and during that time, we experienced many painful deaths of animals. In truth, I did consider many of the farm animals my family. The mistake was that by naming them – something you should never do with farm animals – we effectively turned them into part of our family. I don’t want this entry to become any more morbid than it already is, but I’ll just recount a bit of how I felt when the animals were no longer. First, the chickens that I mentioned earlier. They lived in a coop down the hill from our house. Far enough away that any squabbles they were making, we couldn’t hear (sleeping is important too, you know?). Anyway, the day of the massacre, we couldn’t hear the commotion they must have been making and didn’t realize a chicken apocalypse was taking place until the killer (in other words: the dog) wandered up to our front door with a feather hanging from his lip. All but one (her name was Matilda. Named after the girl in this movie: (Matilda ) was dead when we got down to the coop and sadly, Matilda died later that day. I cried and cried. I was still young at the time but the chicken butchery hit my small girl self really hard.Another thing that hit me right in the gut was when the stupid DISH Network electrician guy left the gate of our driveway open and our dogs escaped. A very nice lady found Cash wandering the highway (that was when he was younger and liked to get into mischief) but our other dog, Marilyn we never found. She was a poi dog (mutt/mixed breed) we had found ourselves but she had lived with us for many years and she was fully integrated into the family. She was a free spirit though and fences were never her friends. Though I never found out what happened to her, it is comforting to think she is still out there somewhere, enjoying her freedom or the companionship of whoever picked her up. When the farm idea wasn’t working out for my parents (not enough money, or something like that  ) we had to give our animal family to our friends who also had a farms. This part wasn’t as hard as actually seeing the aftermath of a death. We gave our old horses, Lehua and J.D. to one of our rancher friends (though I never heard that they died, both of them were very old and I don’t suspect the lived more than one more year). The goats, Boomerang and Gregory, and the flock of sheep (none of the ewes had names but the ram was named Lucky. Lucky because he had all those ladies. ) went to our farmer friends and I’m sure none of the original flock is left. The spawn of Lucky lives on though.  Dealing with these losses has hardened me in a way. I am certainly not lacking emotion, but having these experiences strengthens a person. Though I have not had any devastating losses of family or friends in recent years (*knock on wood*) I believe I would cope with those by talking. Though it is difficult to talk, it is healing. I would also listen to music. Taking my mind off the brooding for a while gives it a well-deserved break. It is also nice though – as Bonnie mentioned in her entry – to immerse yourself in a project. Perhaps something as a tribute to the lost loved one. Wow. Sorry for the long response. I look forward to reading all of the rest of yours! In other news: It is time once again for- Awkward Moments!: Today’s awkward moment is more an embarrassing one. There is this steep hill at my school and the maintenance people felt it needed watering (it was raining that day so I don’t know what was going through their heads . . .  ). I saw the sprinkler showering the hillside with the water in the morning when I arrived at school but by the end of the day it was turned off. Now, this hill is the one I walk down to get from the main school grounds to the student parking lot and so, in my idiocy, that’s what I did today. I was walking quite briskly down said hill, eager to get home, and suddenly my feet slide out from under me. Not sure if anyone saw my spill, I quickly stood back up and – again in my idiocy – continued down the hill, only to slip again! Ugh, it was awful. I wasn’t hurt but I sure made an impromptu slip-and-slide out of that hill. Yes, have a laugh at my expense. That’s what I’m here for.  New Contest Plug!:
It is actually pretty amazing: I just wrote an entry for the "Character Sketch Challenge" which matches the prompt for the first round of this contest exactly! ("Day Seventeen: Gymnopedies No. 1" ) The prompt is: Write a story in which your main character loses someone/something they love. And whatayaknow? It ties back to the theme of today’s entry! Lots of family tragedies these days. Why is that? Of course, I can't enter it because it isn't new. Not to mention the lead up is way too long . . . If your interested to read even more about the loss of a loved one (this one fictional) I would be grateful if you took a little time to look at my entry. Like I said, the actual death scene has a long lead up (you’ve got to see how they got there) but I really had a blast writing it. It is so intense; I was giving myself shivers! How could I be so mean to my characters?Anyway, enough about me. And wow, sorry again for the long entry. Take care all!~Emily EDIT: Oops! Here was the prompt from yesterday for the Character Sketch Challenge: And here is the prompt for today: |
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